the well written - daphne du maurier

They are not brave, the days when we are twenty-one. They are full of little
cowardices, little fears without foundation, and one is so easily bruised, so
swiftly wounded, one falls to the first barbed word. To-day, wrapped in the
complacent armour of approaching middle age, the infinitesimal pricks of day
by day brush one but lightly and are soon forgotten, but then—how a careless
word would linger, becoming a fiery stigma, and how a look, a glance over a
shoulder, branded themselves as things eternal.

- Daphne du Maurier, Rebecca

By Amber Ortolano